Sidequest: Aconitum

20220611-Sidequest-Aconitum 

http://www.ruggenberg.nl/titels.html 

Stripped Ashes, The Rough Luck, Nobody of Son, The Scent's Time, The Snow of the Shards, Gift in the Hunter 

(1, 4)

1 Stripped Ashes

By the time you read this I’ll have already healed from a terrible battle. 

The grass was tall from the late springtime and dry the day before it would rain, in the setting sun, gray and brushing the air like paper chimes a hundred miles with tides of breeze with distant clouds darkly edged and radiant glow, the static of time reached thru the air from a forgotten star striking away the last moisture from the prairie, before the rains came the thunder, before the clouds came the fire struck by lightning. 

Past noticing the blaze a hundred running steps, thinking of horses and hearts and telling them both to keep quick, the sweat puts shame to rains fading into fog lowered and boiling in tumbling swirls of smoke in lines that move if as snakes were flying, and witout turning I am bit between the shoulders, turning to see an archer turning to shoot again, struck in the heart by a great hunter, shooting two arrows as one next, glancing my face and pinning my hand beside my head to a tree of birch or beech, it would not matter which stood with me as both were burned in the wildfire. 

My open wounds covered with ashes, my blood mixing with it to become simple soap as if to wash away my sins, I lie with the lye, the small lizard people called Kobolds come to gather charred wood and ashes for their needs and find a broken body, pouring more water, packing more ashes, starting small campfires around the body they’ve found, chanting superstitious syllables of forgotten meaning and renewed intentions to summon life from the scars of near oblivion. Something has come in shadow form with one hundred arms for its outline, perhaps a centipede, rattling with bones and reeds, perhaps a snake, forcing venom and opiate into the wounds, sealing them into darkness.

2 The Rough Luck

In the caves of the kobolds opening eyes find only the nether dwelling creatures almost in grasp without reach of my arm, an unsettling taste and texture better of the two, the feel of scars becomes a pride of willpower adjusting to the dark light until sight returns where interesting black lines become my many jagged scars a molting skin halted and sealed, healed and seared shut, in pain my bones mend starving and crawling like a shedding snake with many grasps at the scurrying food until the days pass until sitting up, days again until trying to stand for plates of varmint delicacies sometimes even cooked, days again and when I wake there is a kobold shaman, with many sharp bones tied to himself, shaking a rattling stick. 

It shouts pain into my mind, a hangover would be jealous as am I, perhaps struck at least with hunger I sink asleep. It shouts me awake, chatty and hissing, clicks and lisping without any chance of understanding, so I beg for water and food, which only causes it to attack me, hit in the head I fall asleep, awake the next time readily striking the shaman he turns to dust and glitter and smoke drifting down, a great and pure laughter behind me it turns and leaves, as I follow. 

A beautiful hall lined with wood smooth as tables covered with engravings no less than masterful art, stopping to admire and then sit only being pushed, quite rudely, without scratching the floor and dirtying the chairs, where I would not want to sit without cushions despite being a throne room. Then, into a cavern of scaffolding and weapons like crafty rats the collection of catapults and bows with flat carts and barrels stops me to wonder what side of the surface was this world, nevertheless. The upward tunnel breathes fresh air into my soured starving lungs, but they stop in front of me, forced to show my swordsmanship slowed by deep scarring, spellcraft slowed by deep headache and only presto gunpowder, but by the words of the summoning spell they made, if not let me, fireside broth and soup of unfortunate meat and common root, bringing me a book, not of spells, but of described pictures, a day for the letters, a day for the words, a day for sentences too difficult to remember, giving means for safe passage in their tunnels, subtle symbols for spotting their territory. 

3 Nobody of Son

Great luminous sky high noon bringing gold to the blue heavens, my travels take me to a tavern while my journey continues for two days before seeing a town of average people and worthy size, at the public house the entry unnoticed by the many not the publican, I drink as if it were food to pour it into my stomach after days without delights and wait for it to wash the taste from my mind. A hunter buys a cider, but doesn’t drink it, I am perturbed and shout at him and by sentence end honorably drinks to my hurrah and crowd huzzah. 

I tell a joke and the man doesn’t drink and letting such go I ask for work in the way of filth and unsightly things, the man shuns and retains indignance and letting such things go I do magic of small forms with coin and card and crafty lies and the man walks himself and a knife to my back and doesn’t breath and not letting such things go I grab him by the neck and take his knife and make my demands to know what it is that he knows about me I never did. 

Tell me what the wicked knows and do not bet against it. 

You’re supposed to be dead, in the fires that feasted on you, by the arrows I put thru you, you were never alive at that point. 

Many points you put in me…did you start the fire? 

I look around at the new audience, they do not move but to look at the man. 

No, no never, your enemy called you evil, having cheated death you could let me live and disprove the rumor. 

Who is my enemy? Who sent you?

The man raises his arm and I raise his weapon, only pausing him pointing to the outside, honesty without question everyone is only moments from the exit, my grip undone to see which way the man departs, stepping in reverse and turning to run out the back, leaving me to grab a bottle and walk into the street. 

4 The Scent’s Time

A white sky over faaded rooftops I can hear a bird fly, from the foe in the lane, a werewolf warlock in skeleton armor and sharp gauntlets over his hands with long claws at each finger. 

Your body wasn’t in the ashes, it should’ve been so. 

Pity that. Who are you?

Never send a man to do a monster’s work, wouldn’t you agree? 

Tell it to someone who cares. 

The werewolf warlock reaches into a bag of grain and tosses them onto the ground and laughs like a child at play. 

Your end will mean a new beginning, for your crimes against the syndicate of the page-turner. With your death I will be made man again. 

How does that work, fleabag, praytell. 

I will trade your bones in exchange for my freedom. 

Meaning I can’t kill you and find out who sent you. 

It seems to me, you don’t want to talk about it. 

(loading sequence)

I charge at the werelocke, he shouts “Kresik” and the grains in the street flash and grow to burning wheat like vines and fire trying to consume me, wrested and wrought jumping back I see the mangey fucker on a rooftop, without cape three meters high launching the sharp end of a gatepost thru my chest half a second too slow, just as I turn I hear it flying thru the air, off guard imbaanced and falling into another unholy vines of fire trap and now I must disgard my cape. 

I reach for the blade of the sharplight, where there isn’t one after the fire, lost or found, leaping into fire, heavy is the werelocke landing on the ground and onto the same spear thrown at me, howling terrible into the sky bellicose roaring shakes thought to darkness before throwing the spear aside and me with it, into the wagon of wheat, as it heals with magic one clawed paw cover its wound, the other claw reaching at me the entire payload of seeds grown to black fire spines and whips as could seem the ropes of hell and there unable to escape I punch out of the overturned wagon. 

There is a moment, seconds before the werelocke will look, to scan the area and find what prey remains for what is still a three meter werewolf whose powers have gone from its eyes, only song of wolf and eyes of hate with my sent, facing the enemy with choice to run or jump, we’re left inside a ring of fire as it begins to rain. 

5 The Snow of the Shards

The ashes begin falling and as I breathe smoke my scars begin to revive me, cherishable energy each breath my scars begin to glow as I summon rain whose water revives the werelocke, he blows across water in his hand and deep cold blinds me until only the fire in my veins warms me, but reveals me in the clamoring mist, it becomes difficult to see how the rains become snow around the beast, mud freezing around my feet as I am torn with every claw on his hand and lifted off the ground, while he punches a wall with me pierced and flain I use my magic to burn my veins and scars bright nerves burning until released, showing his hand coated in snowy shards of strange mineral, both mirror and fire now reaching my throat, hitting his spear wound does nothing and escape begets panic until there is ten paces between us. 

I was expecting this to be easier. 

Tired, slow, pathetic lumbering clown. 

Hard, careful, immutable, sounds like me. Give up?

The piece of his snow shard glove is like perhaps like the inside of sharplight, if not the same, I remember the future of my salvation reaching out my hand holding it, like a nightmare the reflection in his eye is slower than my strike against it, animal instincts are vicious and effective quickly throwing me before setting another trap of immutable vines from the ground, I lead the dance and simply move just before the beast can leap onto the spear and his own trap. 

You have your wish, old friend. 

As long as we have. 

No one is going to help a lost wizard. 

You are lost as all are, stay down. 

If they find you, this is my curse, we are no more than old trails of your blood.

6 Gift in the Hunter

The rain stops and becomes ashes for eleven seconds then it stops. 

The bones of the werewolve begin to shrink and break like cork trees in the desert, returning to form the fallen and lost creature whose mane and mask dry and break away from sullied and dirtied skin, revealing the face of his oldest if not one of my best friends, I’d seen him not but a year ago when the summer became the silent winter, fit for an autopsy laying in shadows of the afternoon as the sun and onlooking survivors return. The curse of his size leaving him in the rags of a drunken animal at a festival the publican drapes the cape over him, putting a hand on my back, giving pause my curiosity at the crystals as a clue, a terrible fate to make someone suffer, a great lesson it comes with great surprise like a storm of lies or petals, as looking at me there is an eye in the glass frozen and unnatural with an extra ring around curious fire, quickly taking the rest of the silver glass with the pieces sharp and sinewed stuck to the spear with drying blood intent on solving this puzzle, and hoping the reflection isn’t mine. 

/br

Vultures & Scorpions

4/52 Vultures & Scorpions 

1/ Absent Thorns 2/ The Blue Fire 3/ Year of Year 4/ The Silk’s Emerald 5/ The Secrets of the Snow 6/ Past in the Worlds

/1/ Absent Thorns 

A training camp, an evening and supper in lightest rain, meditating in the storm. By the next day at noon, walking thru thick forest, branches pushed aside and clearing walking quietly in open shade, by evening boots on common road. A distant city with a wall, a tavern with farmers at dusk, producing jokes and half drinking, singing and half wincing at the locals’ stories of ghosts. Onto the city, absent of guards in the pathway streets, absent of garrison, requesting an audience with the high court, but absent of king. The banners still hang, the flags still fly, and the people still whisper rumors about unknown visitors. They’re surrounded by fighters, but no warriors. The jester peeks from behind the throne, “give up now, you’re surrounded,” only to laff at them. “What happened here? Where is the king?” “Why, so you can kill?” They answer, “There’ll be no killing, we seek a trophy that only your king has, we come for the Rite of Pol’u.” and a child shouts, “but they have weapons,” and the fighters stand defensively. “We would not explore without defenses. Stand down and let us sit with your leaders, without king, we will go to join his campaign.” The answer, “the king is gone, the council is gone, the alders are gone and they’re not coming back.” “What do you mean?” “The Shirsho come, they take the leaders, take their place and they’ll come for YOU.” the jester presents himself, “Strange for sure, but wait for night, and hear them circle the city. /

/2/ The Blue Fire 

Capable soldiers, curious people, and wonderful food, warming and waiting to learn more of the town language, words the hunters know and revere they speak, the wares and wiles of local lives are learned, the children repeat three syllable pronunciations where they give instinctually two. More importantly their warrior language planning to fight monsters at sundown, somber fear and safe caution - counting weapons and exits and boundaries. They see a necklace and ask for it by name, "where did you get this Claw Hammer" and the child corrects, "It's Clo-Amar" - 'take is to who makes it and you might be King on that empty throne the morning' the maker in a shop with wooden door, a small office with quarters in the back with slanted wall. The grey seller in short had made it himself, and knows what haunts the city, when asked, avoids answer. The maker and of their origin, behind a story of youth and memory there, and with pressure tells a story. These people are good, and to save themselves took pride in magic and science, and without the old magic, the old demons came. There is no sound as the warriors pause. They believe in magic, but not demons, and say as much. Talking it out, they ask where the maker learned to make the necklace, the culture it represents, the spellbinding used to protect the children that wear them at the order of their superstitious mothers, and he tells them about a trader on a road. The trader was a travel companion for a time, but he'd watched him die "during another pointless war, in another pointless country" that gathered the hunters quiet again, they knew the name, "he only mentioned them as the 'Monks of the Blue Fire' - the amulets were made with items traded into the town, themselves made of parts unknown. They take one of these amulets from the neck of the shopkeep. The warriors explain their voyage, with some objections, with some silence, they worry, the knights errand make solace a truer place by giving light-imbued medallions to the children. 

/3/ Year of Eclipse?

Knights of light make across meadow, riding for an hour nightfall brings about caution and pace, slowed to horses walking and caution in the wind, marching against the moonlight, a constant light breeze of clouded glow the wind blows clearing the mist, quiet enough to be asleep in the saddle, a group of ghouls attack the lead and last horses, leggings unraveling and torn with sleeves battered and worn, awfully lacking armor vs broadswords, but their wanton hunger makes them strong in close clasps of desiccated grasping and rasping, arrows let no blood and hatchets only slow their momentum, fists are tearing limb from limb and bites turn into glowing green venom, those bitten groan as others cleave to bones, splitting skulls twain drop them to crawling attack over ground. A grin with narrow eyes in hood and skin of moondust, with raising a hand the ghouls become the undead, even missing limbs they crawl and bite unless their eyes are smashed, by the first undead snuffed the warlock has turned one of the knights to ghoulish puppet, sunken eyes and thin gaunted skin, with armor and broadsword and boot and skill. Two men twist in poisoned anguish as three stand against their zombie brother. The warlock is ghoulish and bites one of three, the poisoned brothers rise with survival rage and fill him with four knives. The warlock laffs, the ill fall back again, the three end their brother pinning his sight and then shortening him, swinging spinning and slashing at the cannibal warlock. The evil creature laffs without sound and smiles as long as a blink, with his knives stabs with blades like fangs the green glowing toxin his feet pause from dance as he readies to bow, their little cuts are scrapes with toxic roots, but the third knight stands behind him. A heavy swing behind the knee makes him kneel. He laffs with echoes and the madness cuts thru the clouds, he laffs with thunder and the sound rises from the earth. A blade would only cut air faster than he loses his head, but it was too late. The eclipse begins.

/4/ The Silk’s Emerald 

They use magic to closingly burn their wounds and alcohol to dilute their blood. Once sure safe to move they retreat in fear of breezes and broken blades of grass, limping and having lost a horse, one another making it back not without pain and suffering. They reenter the town of only youths and elderly, as they stitch their wounds the oldest stand around a sundial seeing the faded glow of the sky’s hanging eclipse. The knight leader, Arawn, orders anyone able to lift a weapon to keep it with them at all times. At the coals of the metalworker he orders a white fire and magic colored fuels, in the fashioning of amulets and finding of artifacts, both heavy and old. One of his men has pains from wounds not healing, he inspects as it infects with web and weaving of silk spider breathing beneath the wound itself from the claws of a man. Arawn pours his own blood into sand, a cup carved with runes, he breathes life into words and light escapes his lungs. Bloodworms seem to spawn from larvae in the cup, but he quickly pours it all over the fierce red and hot coals, from it an iron post gathers it, and with rolling and boiling and burnishing and patience it becomes a unique mosaic blend of red and silver. With a mallet the marble is broken and falls into coals, when the sharp edges sink he takes it in metal tool, carrying it with deep focus, it steams without touching water. The wounded man, different in appearance than the other knights.

Arawn: What’s the weirdest woman to wrestle you at night?

Collin: What?
Medic: What strange tale of beds and breakfast do you know?
Collin: Dolosantra, a Kinian mercenary, during, she would laugh and cry, back and forth.
Arawn: What did it sound like?

Collin: Well it----.

Arawn drops the heat forged marble into the wound, without notice, as Collin screams miniscule spiders break from the white woven nest, electricity arcs and kills each spider as Arawn and medic hold him down. As Collin yells at the pain he screams seeing his wound. 

Medic: I imagine it sounded something like this. 

The medic pulls the stone from cauterized traumatic wound, it glows green. 

Medic: Now we have a warning beacon at least. 

Arawn: Sleep it off. Get him a drink. Hell. Get me a drink.

The eclipse waits. 

/5/ The Secrets of the Snow 

The color of the sun dances in wicked darkness around the moon, the edge of shadow hiding in the echoes of light, around it the sky a mist and fiery smoke, holding high in the sky while the horizons leagues endlessly distant are filled with stars as tide of nightfall kept afar from burning eclipse. Harsh and confusing against the eyes, but the air gets colder. Day after day a new clear winter grows against the tarnished night, each wave of air blades of grass grow weaker in the tarnished light, grinding the patience of the knights errand. The air thick and lazy, like fog between walls and no roof, in this cold the fog becomes snow, not melting against the fires in the dimly lit city, not falling straight like lines of rain, and grey to the touch, the snow is ash. 

/6/ Past in the Worlds

A stranger comes into town. Collin trains with sword in his off hand, and dagger with his wounded arm, He trains himself to make purpose-filled attacks or dodge an assault from Arawn. Thru the gates several soldiers enter, some with weapons already drawn, others ready to fight nonetheless.

Arawn: Looks like vultures, make a distraction. 

Arawn fixes his collar and walks away. The knights continue their planning at a map the nearest forts circled. The soldiers poke thru the baskets and plates of the people they cross, until confronting the knights. Pretends to be wildly drunk, a soldier prods his wound hurting him, the knights stand and protect him, the lead soldier makes his threats and taunts the crowd and mocks them all. As he claims the whole town as his property he points a sword at Collins heart, Arawn secretly captures one of their men with blade against his throat, like a scorpion with control. The soldiers pause and Arawn orders them to leave, the soldiers are silent and Arawn puts the blade against his eye. The hostage orders a truce. 

Nevil: How did you know?
Arawn: You only have ten men and just enuf favor to scout for wares yourself...and - I’m - not sure the ash in the air -- didn’t come from you.

Jester: The ash has to be them

Collin: It has to be something.

Nevil: You need us here...we came for support…

Arawn: Support? 

Nevil: The ash is on your map, Villa Tsoro, Emmis, fire and death, and our Ft Huro scorched earth and undead in sacred armor.
Arawn: If I don’t believe you?

Jester: They can’t be trusted, they started the fires.

Soldier: Let him loose, or fight us all.

Jester: He’s going to kill him, kill them all! 

Arawn stands looking over Nevil’s shoulder at the soldier. Behind himself the jester, akimbo and cocked head in stare. Arawn gracefully releases him and turns to the jester...who grins.

Jester: Oh...can you tell...I got ahead of myself didn’t I…

Arawn: On the ground, slowly.

Jester: ...at least tell me how I look in a cape and hat…

The jester’s eyes turn smoke and green like the warlock the week before.

Arawn: We have questions, I have questions.

Jester: I’m like an open spellbook really.

Arawn: You’re going to answer. Hands in the air.

Jester: Fire away.

The jester raises his hands quickly, the clouds glow red, the town begins to burn as particles of sunlight drip from the weak boundary of the moon, the air polluted with ash of moonstone and fires of a volcanic starlight raining down. They cover their mouths and twenty men begin fighting the warlock. 

The evil jester stands prepared to dance a waltz and offers his hand to any of them, refused his fangs drip and he lashes his arm out, throwing the dense air and half of them into or toward the wall as others attack. 

Jester: You are kindling! 

One man is backhanded to the ground, another brash charges and his helmet dented and bludgeoned toppling backwards heels over feet. 

Jester: You are leaves!

Shield against fist whose bones of knuckles break skin and heal with white fire blood. Sword against arm in the face of destiny, foe against fighter, three swords of three men swing high to low against his back, the warlock turns around swinging, knocking their weapons from hand. 

Jester: Branches and trees!

A spearhead pierces his leg, but only the surface as a knight leaps at it clutching with both hands, skewering the jester’s leg. The jester takes the spear with both hands and slams it and the knight into a wall, then pulls the spear and launches it with a grunt into that knight and wall both. 

Jester: YOU ARE ASHES OF THE MORNING STAR! 

Arawn stands a forearm taller than the jester, battling until his shield breaks, a bigger sword from his belt, now two hands and double-edged sword. Lash against instinct and crash against spirit, stabbing at darkness in the hope of dawn. Arawn hacks once into the warlock jester’s face, infuriating him, his vocal chords tear thru the red air with black smoke, a howl as he strikes Arawn who spins, landing on his knee the jester claws down his back. Arawn stands and turns, now shirtless from it. In the smoke, in the red eclipse, among the fires with scarf as a mask. He holds his arms out, a pillar of virtue and statue of mockery against the jester. 

The jester attacks, Arawn takes stance and defence, using rage as a weapon he only blocks the jester with his sword and each time steps inward, making opportune strikes, elbow to face, shoulder to back, and in the fires Arawn now spins like black smoke. Each block with blade cuts the warlock’s skin, until in rage losing a hand and clutching his wrist. 

Jester: One fire dies, one bolt of lightning and even the air you hide in will burn.

The soldiers and knights spear him many times simultaneously, and the youths and elders launch arrows. As Arawn approaches the gravel crushes beneath his boots, with lunge into kneeling he swings and takes the warlock’s head. 

Arawn: Cremation.

He drops his sword there and walks. 

The sun and moon release each other and go separately, across the sky the colors of clouds and rain glow again from the horizons, and daybreak reveals how heavy the smoke is as fresh air returns. A mere child picks up the glowing red and silver marble and it begins glowing. 

/6ch